Interlude: The Giant's Causeway

After a week in Donegal, I headed to Northern Ireland. My trip there gave me so much to think about, reflect about, and talk about! But first, a brief interlude at the Giant's Causeway.

My utterly adorable, brave, strong, and funny pet hermit crabs (this is relevant, I promise) are named Niamh and Oisín, after two characters in an Irish legend. While they have an beautiful story in their own right, Oisín's father, Finn McCool, is a much more prominent person in Irish mythology. According to legend, he created the causeway, and left clues in the rocks about his habits. The causeway is a path he constructed to Scotland; other rocks are a pipe organ he created for Oisín to play, a large boot, and a chimney. He even has a camel, visible in the first picture.

The Homes of Donegal

This is one of the moments in my life I will always remember: riding in a silver minivan with two other women, watching a gold and blue morning erupt over the passing green mountains of Donegal and the glistening sea, with Paul Brady blasting from the dashboard. We laughed as we drove, past the boats crammed into Killybegs harbor, past the curly-haired, red-painted sheep, past the man piling stacks of bagged peat in his field. The week in Donegal was behind us, but the land was open to us and the sun and everything to come was in front of us. 

Top to bottom: Donegal Town main street, houses, and Donegal Castle

Killybegs Harbor

Exactly one week before, I had met one of the women as we waited for a bus in Donegal Town and discovered we were both headed for the same place: Oideas Gael and the Language and Culture Summer School in Glencolumbkille, Donegal. It took us another two busses, each successively smaller, to reach the Glen. Once we arrived, we found our assigned housing, met our classmates, and began our course. For the next week, we spent the morning studying the Irish language, the afternoon in arts workshops, and the evenings in concerts and impromptu sessions in the local pub. 

First walks in Glencolumbkille

I was so excited to meet my classmates, and to discover the myriad reasons they had for studying Irish. One of my housemates had done graduate work at a university in Ireland and was a traditional fiddler who felt connected to Ireland through her music; she plays in sessions in her hometown in the Netherlands. Another housemate, from Switzerland, had come to Ireland with her husband and fallen in love with the landscape and songs of the country. She was an incredible singer herself and had some gorgeous Irish songs up her sleeve! And another housemate, the joyful driver of our silver minivan and a talented tin whistle player herself, was inspired to study Irish when her children began to study it at school. These various motivations intrigued and inspired me.

Folk Village and Museum - but there was at least one family house in the village that looked just like this! 

Port

During my coursework, I was amazed at how much I learned and how easily our teacher elicited conversation from us. As my classmates and I shared questions and stories, we were teaching one another. I felt challenged as I realized I had a lot to learn, but I also felt reassured as I saw that I had knowledge to share with others. 

Beachy lunch break

 More walks round Glencolumbkille

Last day at the Silver Strand - Mailin Beag 

I delighted in what I was learning, but I delighted just as much in seeing my classmates learn, too. It wasn't just the language classes, but also the arts workshops and the music sessions in the pubs, where we learned and, even more, where we came alive. It was a privilege to spend my week with such curious, smart, creative, and joyful people! 

There were many times during this week when I felt like pinching myself: walking through the glen on my way to class, surrounded by heather and flowers dropping from hedgerows; smelling curls of peat in the air on the way home from the pub; gathering outdoors for our opening concert, with our songs echoing from the glen. But the beautiful thing to me, and the thing that I'll hold onto, is the feeling of pure joy as we drove away from Donegal, knowing that together we had faced our challenges and embraced our gifts.

A classmate practices tin whistle on the bluff. Yes, this picturesque scene really happened.

Our opening concert in the glen. Yes, this really happened too.

Adventure in Heaven: Galway, Gaeilge, and Music

At 9:00 on a warm summer morning, I stepped off a plane and into a place of my dreams when I saw an Irish language welcome on the wall of Shannon Airport. I had come to Ireland to spend a week in an Irish language immersion program, and to explore the way Irish was used everyday. My first few steps on Irish soil (on Shannon tile) were already rewarding.

As I passed through customs, waited for Bus Éireann, and stared through my sleep-deprived plane exhaustion at the towns between Shannon and Galway City, I was hungry for every sound, every flick of light, every color. I remember one absolutely perfect town somewhere in Clare - blue and yellow flags darting between shops and across the street, little knotted hedges along a pasture. At Gort, an elderly lady got on the bus and sat next to me. She commented on the weather and on my knitting. I thought Irish people would be sick of tourists but she wanted to talk to me about why I had come "back" to Ireland - saying I had come back despite the fact I had just told her it was my great-grandmother who was born here.

We all tumbled down from the bus in Galway City, and scattered in different directions. I stood in front of a billboard that showed smiling (presumed) Irish-speakers, encouraging Galwegians to be bold about using their Irish.  After a deep breath, I set off to my hostel - and totally fell in love with Galway. I may have mentioned that I am a person who loves colors, but if not - I LOVE COLORS - and Galway has them, along with music at every step. They are everywhere but especially along a cobblestone road that leads to the harbor and the sea. So along with bright fuchsia and lime green and fiddles, there is blue-grey streaked with grass green, and the calls of gulls. And, best of all, Irish peppered everything, from the street signs to the municipal garbage cans.

While in Galway, I had a couple of errands, including ordering, collecting, and shipping home a half a dozen hurling sticks for my camogie club. After taking in the scene, I started on my task; completing it took the help of the hostel staff, the camera shop, the stationery shop, the post office, and the entire family of hurley makers themselves.  I was so blown away by the kindness of each of these people, who treated me as more than a customer and offered generosity as if it were the air they breathed. When I left Galway on a busy Saturday morning, headed for the next stage of my journey, I bumped into the camera shop guy, who smiled and waved in happy recognition.

How I left my comfort zone: I called a stranger (the hurley maker) to ask about hurley sticks, a subject in which I'm not an expert; I carried on a conversation with a stranger on the bus. Yes, I'm shy! 

What I learned: Talking to people can be so rewarding, and there is so much goodness in this world.

Post Birthday Challenges, Continued

Tonight I'm making some space in my evening for reflection. The months since my birthday have been incredibly rich, and I have much to reflect on. As I look back, I realize how many new experiences, challenges, and adventures I've embarked on, even if I didn't treat them all as Birthday Exercises. They've come in the form of hard conversations, new recipes, ferry rides, prayers, and attempts to enjoy almond, rice, quinoa, and flax milk.  They've provided plenty of material for blog posts to come [but spoiler alert: there's no milk like milk]. It's been fruitful, fun, grace-filled, challenging, and awesome to be 30.

 I hope to share many of those challenges with you, but first, I'll write about the challenges that awaited me on the other side of the Atlantic ...